From Mature to Teen

[Razakel]

The people posting sane and reasonable replies to requests for censorship need to understand that people that demand censorship are not sane or reasonable. Take a trip to your local soup kitchen and try to convince a homeless schizophrenic that the Government is not specifically out to get them and you'll understand the kind of ignorance you're up against.

[Ferryt]

Heheh ... you know, I might rant about this on occasion, but I full well know what Razakel is saying, and TodaY has made an argument that I've made so many times, elsewhere, that I've lost count. It wouldn't have surprised me at all if Bethesda had been forced to re-rate Oblivion "M" even if the idiot who left that topless upper female body buried in the resources hadn't done it. Why? Wasn't it about a week or so after this game hit the stands that someone had already made a fully nude mod for it? You can't rate a game based upon how it can be modded. Heck, with just a little programming and graphics talent you could make an X-rated version of PacMan. How long was the Sims on the shelves before adult mods for it were made? Look what happened to Second Life after Linden Lab caved into critics (actually their advertisers) regarding adult content in a "game" (it's not actually a game) that you have to be an adult to use in the first place! I doubt there's a single moddable RPG or FPS that can't be (likely that hasn't been) supplied with at least one mod with an "adult slant".

 

As TodaY pointed out, kids, even pre-teens, already know quite a bit about sex. Many kids in later secondary school and early high school are already sexually active, whether their parents know about it or not. We're not "protecting" anyone by trying to hide it from them in movies and games. One of my friends related a little anecdote regarding his daughter, who he overheard talking to one of her friends about "making sex". Upon questioning her, later, he found out she already knew how to "do it" and her descriptions of various acts showed that it wasn't guesswork, either. She was seven years old. Censorship is outdated. The real world has left the entire concept in the dust. Children of today know much more about the harsh facts of reality than their parents did at the same age ... indeed, many know more than their parents do now. The harsher reality, though, is that censorship is here to stay, at least for the foreseeable future, so we're just going to have to live with it.

 

What Sojan was asking for is actually a reasonable request in the light of today's censor-happy media and clueless parents. I wish it were that simple to just drop in a mod and "clean" a game up that has the stuff in it that he would like to hide from his little brother. It's a shame that kid isn't going to be play Oblivion, though, just because of a few blood-splattered surfaces, a very tiny amount of cursing, and, to my knowledge, just one "suggestive" remark and just one rather objectionable to many (but still funny) joke. Maybe I'm just not remembering it all, but I tend to gloss over things like this. Aside from blood-splattered surfaces, which I don't have to deal with anymore, now that I'm no longer employed by a veterinarian, I'm used to hearing people say objectionable things almost every day. The really ironic thing about it is that so are any children who are in the public school system, and a lot of that stuff is being said by their fellow classmates. And, yet, we still feel a need to "protect" them from it in games, movies, music, and literature.

[buddah]

I am locking this.

 

• ameDaily /
• Exclusives /
• Breaking: ESRB Changes Oblivion's Rating to "M"

Breaking: ESRB Changes Oblivion's Rating to "M"

 

May 03, 2006 | By: James Brightman

| More Perhaps learning from the debacle that was the "Hot Coffee" scandal, the ESRB today changed the rating on The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion from Teen to Mature. Depictions of blood and gore and a third-party nude "skin" mod were cited as the major reasons. [update: IEMA reacts; Update #2 - Bethesda responds] The Entertainment Software Rating Board (ESRB) has just sent word that the rating assigned to Bethesda's and 2K Games' The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion has been changed from T (Teen 13+) to M (Mature 17+). "The content causing the ESRB to change the rating involves more detailed depictions of blood and gore than were considered in the original rating, as well as the presence of a locked-out art file or 'skin' that, if accessed through a third party modification to the PC version of the game, allows the user to play with topless versions of female characters," said the ESRB in a release.

 

 

 

 

Read the full story here:

 

 

http://www.gamedaily.com/articles/features/breaking-esrb-changes-oblivions-rating-to-m/68893/?biz=1

 

It had as much to do with the violence and anything else.

 

Buddah